Part Four: Sink or Swim?

When Miss Maggie arrived home that evening at 6:53 after cleaning her very last house, Fin pretended to be asleep. She didn't want tell her mother about Ellar anymore. She decided it was a secret that she would share with no one but herself. After all, only she knew the proper way to summon him. Thomas had been a gamble, like faking sick. Sometimes you landed a free day off school and sometimes you landed in the doctor's office.

The next afternoon found Fin with her knees in the muddy bank, whispering over and over again, "Ellar, Ellar please come back. This is Findley Swain inviting you for a visit." At 4:13 exactly, a silver fish somersaulted over Fin's head before making a neat jackknife back into the water.

"Good afternoon, Miss Swain." Ellar spoke with his mouth only partly above the water's surface so that little air bubbles accompanied his words.

"Good afternoon, Ellar the fish." Fin said, scrambling up to make a sort of bow. Fin remembered that Ellar was the kind of fish who required a certain degree of etiquette.

"Where is the other human? The boy?"

"He, uh, won't be coming back to the river." Fin studied her grimy hands.

"What do you mean he won't be coming back?" Something about the way Ellar asked this particular question made Fin pictured her first grade teacher, Mr. Winston. He was a stooped man with tufts of graying hair at his temples and no where else. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that were always slipping down his nose when he looked down at you.

"Thomas Chickering is no friend of mine." Said Fin a little too loudly. She didn't like the idea that a fish could bully her.

"My dear girl, I am the one that summoned the lad and I will be the one to decide if he returns. Really! I don't understand how..." The rest of the speech was lost in a myriad of bubbles. Ellar had gotten so worked up that he slipped completely below the surface. In fact, he was under for so long, that Fin began to walk away with the idea that he might be calmer tomorrow.

"No matter, no matter." She heard from behind her. "Can't all fit together just so at the beginning." Ellar was saying. "All journeys have their bends in the road."

At the word "journey," Fin scurried back to the water's edge. "What journey? Where'm I going?"

"You mean where are you AND Thomas going, my dear. And that will become clear when you can answer this simple question: sink or swim?"

Fin paused for a long while. She was afraid of the answer. "You asked Thomas that one before." She said, stalling for time. Ellar merely nodded, the low sun throwing a glint of rainbow colors from his scales. "Well nobody wants to sink," Fin said finally, shuddering at the image of dark and swirling waters, "so if I had to choose between the two, I'd say 'swim.'"

"Right you are. Knew I'd picked you for a reason." Ellar nodded his approval. "So tomorrow at 4:13 you will bring Thomas and we three shall swim towards the beginning of our adventure." He spoke these last words with the same tone that the preacher used during the benediction at church and then began to disappear below the water once more.

"Wait!" Fin shouted in a panic. Ellar stopped his descent but did not re-emerge. Fin knew before she spoke that her next words would cause the loss of a second friend in two days. "I--I can't swim."

Ellar only paused for a beat before replying, "Can't and shan't are two very different animals, my dear." Then she watched as he disappeared completely. She was fairly certain that the sea of bubbles dissolving in his wake was laughter.

Fin stood and began rubbing the muck off her corduroy pants with a handful of leaves. A shudder passed over her as she pictured the dark depths of the winding river, teeming with all things slimy and slick. On her walk home she wondered to herself: why can't you learn life lessons without getting wet?